Slashcast Metachat: Great Ship Debate Series: Remus/Sirius
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Slashcast Metachat: Great Ship Debate Series: Remus/Sirius |
| Interviewer: | charlotteschaos (Char) |
| Interviewee: | moony and scarah2 |
| Date(s): | April 26, 2006 |
| Medium: | online transcript, podcast |
| Fandom(s): | Harry Potter |
| External Links: | online transcript, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Slashcast Metachat: Great Ship Debate Series: Remus/Sirius is a chat with moony and scarah2. charlotteschaos is the interviewer.
"We're going to discuss puppy shipping this time..."
It is a podcast at Slashcast and includes an online transcript.
For more in this series, see Slashcast Interview Series.
Excerpts
Sarah: I want to start off with a little bit of a disclaimer. I never want to tell anyone not to create or enjoy whatever fanworks they want to. That's not what this is about. I mean, fanon is fanon and whatever blows your dress up, blows your dress up. That's not where I'm going with this. Where I am going is, people go around saying that Sirius and Remus are so obvious in the books. There’s people walking around going, you know, "I don't even slash and even I can see Sirius/Remus." That’s the part I don't get. What's that about? To elaborate: I'll go back to the chronological beginning, which for you Sirius/Remus shippers is of course Prisoner of Azkaban. If that were to be the last book in the series, I would totally get it. A lot fans are interested in the marauders generation, so the marauders are, of course, Peter, who's not the very, like, hot Harry Potter guy, and also he's kind of dedicated his life to Lord Voldemort. Then you have James who, you know, he got married and had a kid, never stopped anyone from slashing Lucius, but I gress, 'cause, you know, James mainly finds himself in the unfortunate position of also being dead, so you have two left over to slash. Makes perfect sense to me. Plus the whole brotherly hug thing, totally I'm right there with ya. Goblet of Fire, same thing. Lupin didn't do a whole hell of a lot, but, you know, at the end you had Sirius going to, like, go to his house and stuff, right? So that's total sense. I'm totally still with you.
However. Then came Order of the Phoenix. After this book, I know the puppy shippers wanted to like this book for several reasons. One was that Lupin never had to ring the door bell, he was living there. He was living in Sirius' house. They gave Harry a joint Christmas present and all that. That makes sense. But look at their states of mind in this book. Sirius is totally miserable throughout the whole thing. Does that look like the behavior of someone who's just been, like, reunited with their true love forever? And Lupin, you know, he's okay I guess, but his clothes get shittier and shittier even though Sirius has money. I'll get to the whole money point later on when I talk about Half Blood Prince, but for now, that takes care of the Order of the Phoenix timeline itself, however we also had a flashback in that book. The flashback, I don't see how anyone could think that Sirius loves Remus, I'm sorry. I mean, it looks to me like Sirius and James keep Remus around because they think he's their cool pet monster or something. Sirius clearly disdains Lupin's feelings. He says he wishes it was full moon and, you know, and it was time for Lupin to undergo his hideously painful transformation, and Lupin is, like, pissed off. I don't know how there's any other possible reading of that that would come out in favor of Sirius/Remus. I just don't.
Okay, so moving on, Half Blood Prince. Sirius' entire estate left to Harry. Not even, like, a dress robe for Lupin.
Moony: My turn! Well, actually, this is going to sound very odd, but I actually agree with her on 90% of what she said. I will say that sometimes I don't tend to fit in with a lot of the, I refuse to say puppy shipper... I don't fit in with a lot of the Remus/Sirius shippers because I have a more, well, I like to think I have a more realistic view of how it might have gone down. As with any slash pairing in the books, it is- the whole reason we have fandom is because we write between- what's between the lines that we see and want to see, which as any Harry/Draco shipper will tell ya, it's not gonna happen! It's a children's book, she's already pissed off the fundamental Christians. She's not be going and writing any gay buttsex happening at Hogwarts. Even though, at an English boarding school, it happens. I will say, when I first read the books all in one night, book three Prisoner of Azkaban got me, that was when I was just like, "Oh, they're so totally doing it. Or they did before he went off to prison and went insane. They totally did it." And it is, it's kind of the quintessential, the jumping off point for the ship, but the part I will disagree with you on a little bit is, yea the joint Christmas present thing, oh yea we were crowing about that for ages, and the whole living together and... I don't really see them having a relationship after- after they became adults, after Prisoner of Azkaban 'cause yea, they were- they were screwed up. They were a mess. There was a lot that went on that went down, so you got a point on that, but what I think the appeal, and the reason why Remus and Sirius shippers carry on the way we do, is because it appeals to the hopeless romantic, emphasis on hopeless. And there's a lot of untold story there. There's a lot that happened in those seven years that we won't ever know, so there's a lot of fair game and that flashback, yea. Sirius was a gigantic jerk. He was a total jerk - so was James. There's actually more emphasis on James and Sirius' relationship and potential for James/Sirius in that flashback, but that was also fifth year and we have the, and I hate it when they capitalize it, the 'prank.'
Moony: There's a certain mailing list out there for Sirius and Remus fic that, uh, I've never had a very good relationship with because 90% of it is that. It's- it's, "Let's take Sirius and make him an idiot and the whore of Babylon, and let's take Remus and make him pine." He pines, he pines not for ______, but for Sirius because Sirius is an idiot and doesn't see that Remus is pining. And Remus is also a complete and utter girl and there's usually glam rock involved and- It's just this kind of formulaic...
Moony: It drove me nuts after book six, when everybody- when a certain demographic of fandom was having a conniption fit over a certain ship that didn't happen. I'm not going to name names because I really don't want to be- I don't want the lightning bolt to strike me.
Char: Oh, they're not listening to Slashcast, trust me.
Moony: Okay, I'm safe. Not all Harry/Hermione people- I know a lot of intelligent, calm, rational Harry/Hermione people. I am not talking about the entire fandom, I'm not making a grand sweeping declaration. But a good chunk of them went completely bat shit insane and, uh, we're talking about how their ship was sunk and I just wanted to tell them, "My ship, half of my ship died in book five. And as we have seen over and over again, they don't come back. So my ship is actually sunk. Your's? Not sunk because he's still alive, she's still alive. That- booty can happen!"
Moony: See, okay, the equivalent of going to fanfiction.net is to go to a very tall bridge, tie a really, really heavy rock to your foot, drop it over the side. That's pretty much, that's fanfiction.net. If you want to find good fic, um, what you do is you do exactly what you just did. Ask somebody who- find somebody who maybe you, you know- this is what I do. I find people that I respect, that are friends of mine, who I enjoy, you know, I read their journal. If their journal is, you know, well written, if they have a decent grasp of grammar and punctuation and they seem relatively intelligent, chances are they're going to like the good stuff. So you tend- you ask around, ask your friends, and, you know, check out a few of the communities. There's a couple of really good communities. They're slightly elitist, but they do deliver on the good fic. There's shackingup and thekennel, which they both have very clever names and they also are full of people who can really write fic. I know a few really, really amazing authors. If you just kind of want a feel good fic, if you want something that is- that is well written and not too long, but kinda- it builds on, builds up on character and is also hopelessly just romantic and squeeful, um, casirafics. She does really good stuff.... musesfool does really good stuff, she's- I go back and I read her stuff all the time. One of the best fics I've ever read also has a remix done of it, it's a, uh, kinda of 'what if' that when Sirius fell through the veil, he got a second chance to change history, and he did and he lived a whole other life until he had to come back through the veil and start over, basically, having been gone for two years only in, you know, the canon world. And it was just really well done. It's by, I'm probably pronouncing her Live Journal name wrong, it's by satisma. Promised Eternity is the name of it. And it is brilliant and it's really well- it's just really well written and it's one of my favorite fics. I have it bookmarked, and I think, I want to say musesfool wrote a remix to it that showed what happened on the other side for Sirius, so if you read the two together, you get really good characterization, you get really hot sex scenes, which is really why are we all here? And it- those are good for starting on Sirius/Remus. Some of the classics I wouldn't recommend 'cause they seem kind of cheesy now, but they were, you know, some of the first. Boys Own Camping Adventure, I think, is Heidi’s favorite. She's always pimping that one, and it is a little cheesy, but it's so cute.